At my club we have a couple of shinohara electro-frog double crossovers. We usually have two problems with them. 1. Is when the wheels short out at the frog. It's mostly longer steam locos or six axle diesels,but cars with metal wheels do it also. Nail polish on the frogs solved that problem. 2. Is when the backs of the wheels touch the open point and short out. Again it's usually locos with longer wheelbases. The wheels are in gauge with the NMRA standards gauge, but the point opening is not wide enough to let the wheels pass without rubbing on the point. The fix for that is a little more involved than nail polish and we haven't done anything about it.
I recently had a similar problem with a Peco insulfrog turnout that an 0-6-0T would traverse beautifully whereas my new SW7 would stop dead upon entering from the diverging end.
Turned out that the points stopped millimeters short of closing fully when set for the mainline--the under-the-subroadbed Peco turnout motor was misaligned and binding. I solved the problem by reinstalling the motor, a task I hope I never, ever have to do again.
Rick Krall
Do you have feeders on the other side of the turnout? Drop some more feeders to the buss and take the rail joiners out of the electrical equation. Another thing I like to do is solder a small piece of decoder wire from the point rails to the stock rails. Peco, Sinohara and my hand built turnouts are done like that.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
GE_AC_LOCOI am runnig longer/six axle diesels, and it happens to both of them. I haven't tried a smaller loco yet as I have them apart for decoder installation. 1. I'm a little confused what you mean by "points". 2. Could it be that I am entering the switch backwards? 3. When you said electro-frogs, I don't know if that applies to me since I have yet to power the frogs, and the locos are shorting way short of the frogs. They are shorting/stopping (it isn't showing as a short on my pm42, or booster), as soon as the loco enters the switch, or hits the points. I might be way off in this message, as I am still a little confused about what you mean by points. I think you mean the two rails that switch back and forth allowing the switch as open or closed.
If you're referring to my post, yes, a turnout's points are as you understand them to be. And note that I said "insulfrog," not "electrofrog." My Peco's frog is not powered.
I my case, I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what happened electrically other than "short," but the longer wheelbase SW7 caused a short when the trucks bridged the gap between the route trackage and the turnout. The Model Power 0-6-0T has a shorter wheelbase and doesn't get power from all wheels, and I assume that's why it bridged the gap with no problems. I power each turnout separately, with feeders to the inside rails on the diverging side of the frog and feeders to the outside rails on the point side. I do use rail joiners to connect the track, but I don't depend on them to carry power to the rails.
Short form--I hope my experience can help you. Unfortunately, if your points are closing fully, I have no idea what else might be wrong.